


Before the Wall Falls

by Purple_Firestorm



Series: The Walking Dead Series [1]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead AU - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexual Female Character, Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, My First Fanfic, Slow Burn, Some events happen and some don't, some characters live and some die, the walking dead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 05:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 23,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8565967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Firestorm/pseuds/Purple_Firestorm
Summary: Anya has been on her own for months, working her way to DC to meet her sisters in the only place she thinks they might be. Along the way, she saves the life of a young man who says his mom is the leader of a community not far away. But when they arrive, Anya sees who the real leader is. Faced with oblivious residents, a distrust of most people, and a vast array of skills, she must fight with the only ones who know what life is really like. And she starts to fall for a rugged man, and a beautiful woman. (Anya is bisexual). Told in the first person, this is her first real chance to make a life for herself, and allow her heart to care again. But is that a mistake?--This work has been discontinued and will not have a second part.--





	1. Still Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first posted work, so please don't be too critical. More notes at the end.

The sounds of the walkers behind me was still there, but it was fading as I ran through the woods and gained ground on them; with each foot I gained on the herd, I was more confident to take a turn and hide, to disappear from their eyes and ride out the herd. I finally found a small hole in the ground and after searching it for walkers; I slid into it and waited. I pushed some dirt and a log over the small hole so nothing would fall in it, and waited. As the minutes ticked by, the walkers came closer, the sounds and smells more familiar than I would want to admit. They traipsed through the thick leaves and trees, following forgotten sights and sounds; but since they were dumb as fuck, they just kept going. I waited and waited, it seemed like hours, and finally the sounds of the walkers, their deep growls, their shuffling footsteps, faded and there was nothing but the gentle rustling of leaves as a faint summer breeze moved through the woods. I waited a bit longer in case a straggler or 2 came along, then I removed the log from the top of my hole and slid out from it and looked around. The walkers had left tracks in the leaves and the underbrush, leaving behind a disgusting film of filth, decay and rotted flesh and blood behind them.   
I looked up at the sky and let a sigh escape my lips: any animals around here would be long gone, so there went my plans for hunting for the day. I rubbed the back of my neck, sore from being still for so long then walked along the path I had intended to take. It was a faint game trail, very faint, and it was harder to find since the walkers mostly wrecked it; I backtracked until it started to get dark, but it was still unbearably hot in the middle of summer. I wiped the sweat from my face and decided to continue looking in the morning, heading north, to DC. I had an idea that if there was something set up to survive the apocalypse, it would be there; maybe a military camp or something. Either way, I was heading there, but my hopes weren’t very high. Nothing lasts long in this world anymore.  
It had been almost 2 years since the turn and the world went to hell, and several months since I had seen other people, at least those that didn’t want to kill or rape me. That was the hard part, trying to figure out who wanted to help me, ad who wanted to hurt me. In the last few weeks I had run across more and more walkers that had an odd W carved into their foreheads, and it was worrying; it was obvious to me that a group of some kind, and a very hostile one, had control of the area and I wanted to not be anywhere near them.   
As the sun set below the trees, I made myself a small bed in a well-filled oak tree and hid in a small dip where the large branches met the trunk. It wasn’t the most comfortable place I had stayed since the turn, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. It was clean and wasn’t rotting or anything, and I was able to snag a few hours’ sleep.  
I felt, rather than heard, the sounds of someone walking through the leaves and woke form a half-relived nightmare; I slid deeper into the truck of the tree, hiding everything that would give away that I was there. I pulled in my hair and slipped a mud-covered piece of tarp over me. I was a good fighter, but my best chance was hiding to live to fight another day. I listened and heard the sounds of 2 men, both with large feet and one with a limp in his left foot, walking to my tree, then stopped just below it, talking.  
“ya sure they saw that bitch in this area? Looks the same t’me,” a man said with a country accent.   
“How the hell do I know? I just go looking where I’m told. Ryan killed the last one and we need new ass, unless you wanna bend over,” the second one said. I could hear them talking, moving slightly in the leaves as they looked around. I hoped they wouldn’t look up, because they would see the tarp from their close position.   
“Go fuck yersefl,” Butch said and I heard them walking off. I knew they were looking for me, but I had no idea someone had seen me. Maybe someone saw the herd moving and found me that way; I held my breath as the men rustled the leaves under my tree. I gripped both of the blades I owned in either hand, ready to strike if they found me. I held my breath longer and longer, but didn’t hear them moving on. They finally took a few steps away and I exhaled, then I heard the crackle of a walkie.   
“In the tree, dumbasses,” someone said over the walkie and I heard them coming at me full-speed. The tarp was ripped from my body; I could hear the men standing below me and I waited, waiting for them to come to me. I was well hidden in my little hole and wouldn’t be easy to attack from the ground. They would need to come to me. I heard them whisper to one another and the sounds of their boots on the tree trunk and a balding head came over the side of the trunk. I slammed my shorter knife into that head and felt the hot blood on my hands, then slammed the longer knife into the head of the other man that was still not in sight, but I knew where he was from the sounds he made. I could feel the blood, bone and brain matter on my hands as I pulled out both knives and let the men fall, dead. I quickly moved from my spot, taking all my things, and taking as much from them as I could, when I heard the first shot and felt the pain in my shoulder.   
I ran through the thicker trees and hid behind them, one by one, hoping to get out of sight of the sniper, wherever they were. I ran harder than I had with the walkers, because although walkers were in greater numbers, they were slower and easily fooled. I ran farther and farther, sometimes hearing a walker in the distance, and heard the shot ring out 2 more times before I knew I was out of range. The walkers I came across I just ignored; I would be gone before they had completely stood up or tried to follow me. Walkers were incredibly stupid, slow and easy to evade if you knew what you were doing. Not people. People were much smarter, well most of them, and could be much more creative and ruthless when it came to killing. I had seen that so many times in my recent life I couldn’t even count them on my hands anymore. And I had done some of it too.


	2. Moving Towards DC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kind of filler to show what Anya does on her own, before she meets anyone from Alexandria.

As the sun rose into the sky and I figured it was about noon, I stopped at a small stream and took in some much needed water. I had taken a bottle of water each from the men I had killed and now had plenty of space to hold the fresh, cool water as I took it in. I was still aware of the sounds around me, listening for the footfall of a person or walker as long as I was filling my bottles, and then cleaned my wound. I removed my shirt and bra, looked at my wound and saw that blood had gotten on my shirt; I couldn’t wear it anymore. Walkers would smell the blood for some distance; I left that shirt in the woods and walked off in my bra, just my bra, and felt embarrassed despite realizing how silly that was. Who was going to see me in my bra in the middle of the woods in the apocalypse?   
I walked for most of the afternoon and into the evening as the setting sun cast long shadows, making it harder to see. As I was about to call it a night, I saw the woods clearing and headed towards it and found a small gravel road. I stuck to the woods, staying out of sight, but followed it and as the sun set, I came to a small cabin and carefully looked inside through the window. A thick layer of dust covered all the surfaces, including the dead man in there, a large bullet hole through his head, probably from the rifle that sat across his body. I slowly made my way in there and found that it wasn’t too badly ransacked, so I took all I could fit in my bag. I was actually forced to pick and choose what to take, a rare opportunity. I left some of the less-desirable foods from my pack and replaced them with the canned fruits, canned meat and beans, and even some spaghetti rings. I wasted no time in eating several cans of spaghetti, lighting a small fire in the fireplace in the back of the cabin, and enjoyed the warm food. Though it was really hot outside, the warm food was nice, a good change from all the cold canned goods I had eaten for some time.   
I looked out the window and saw a few small trees in the rear, and I thought I could make a home here for a little while, but with the W people so close, I couldn’t stay here for long. I knew it wouldn’t be too long before they sent more people out, and I risked them finding me here if I made a permanent base in this little cabin. Besides, it would get a little lonely by myself. I was lonely, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. I missed people, even though I hadn’t been the most social person before the turn, but after months of not having a conversation with someone that wouldn’t try to kill me, I was lonely. I just didn’t want to admit it because that made me feel weak, like I actually needed someone else to survive.  
I made myself comfortable in the cabin and put out the fire so it wouldn’t burn down the cabin, and so no one would follow the smell of smoke towards me. I slept decent that night, better than I had in weeks, and woke up refreshed and ready to attempt another hunt. I gathered all there was to take from the cabin and made my way north, following the game trail through the woods and listening for walkers.  
When it got dark, I gave up my hunt and just started heading north again to DC, and my thoughts went to my sisters, who had the idea of DC before I did. They had thought about finding safety there, a safe haven, but after over a year of the walker-infested world around me, I thought it was a lost cause. I was heading there, some part of me hoping that it was all true, but the main reason was I knew my sisters would be heading there, and it was the only place I could think of to find them. We had been separated after another group took our small sanctuary, and I hadn’t seen them in weeks. I knew the chances of them both being alive was small, but I couldn’t give up hope until I had made it to DC and looked for them.


	3. First Contact in Months

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya finds Glenn and his group in the industrial building, and rescues Ayden seconds before he's devoured. She learns of Alexandria and, after treating his wounds, promises to take Ayden there. Her hopes aren't high, and her mind is on taking what she can and leaving, because nothing lasts anymore.

It had been over a month, or so my calendar told me, since I had killed the 2 men in the tree in the woods, and I was still heading north towards DC. I was near an old industrial area when I heard the sounds of a large van coming in, and watched from the woods as about half a dozen people got out, including an overweight man with a mullet and a pretty woman. They entered the warehouse and I recognized the company as one that made renewable energy components, mostly solar panels; I watched them for a while then I heard the sounds of walkers behind me and I decided this group was the less threatening.   
I slid down the small hill near me and walked towards the building and listened, ready to go in, or take the van, whatever I needed to do. I could hear the sounds of yelling and screaming, then something shook the entire building and glass blew out from an explosion. I couldn’t help myself as I slid into the building and looked around, trying to hear the sounds from the people over the walkers that had gotten in. I heard shouting and crying, and peaked around the corner to see a young, attractive Asian man trying to pull another guy off some poles sticking out of the wall, walkers closing in. The man that was pinned said something to the Asian man and the Asian man took off, the walkers closing in on the man who was trapped. I could see his eyes close as he braced himself for the biting and pain that would come, but it never did. I raced in there with both blades out and killed the 4 walkers just a half step from eating the trapped man.  
He looked at me, blood dripping down his body and I looked him over. Most of his wounds were deep, but not in major areas of the body. His heart sounded okay, despite racing, but one of his lungs had been punctured and it looked like his right kidney had been hit. The other wound was in his shoulder, just a flesh wound. I pulled hard on his body, bracing one of my legs against the wall behind him and he screamed in pain as the sounds of a van taking off echoed in the building. I pulled him off with a few more tugs and quickly wrapped up the wounds, hoping he wouldn’t bleed to death. I pulled him to the back door they had come in and killed a few walkers that made their way to me, and slid him onto a pallet-jack with a pallet on it and pulled him as fast as I could across the parking lot and into the woods.  
I wasn’t far from the sight of the building when I stopped, out of breath, and the wheels were now stuck in a rut and it was too hard for me to pull it out. I looked the young man over, not much younger than me, with a well-groomed, well-nourished body, obviously living in a nice place. He might be my ticket into someplace that was better than living in the woods. Hell, almost anything was better than living in the woods.  
It was a few days of me taking care of the man before he was coherent enough to speak to me with more than a few words. All he had been able to say was “Ayden,” “Alexandria,” and “mom.” While he was unconscious I opened his wounds more to assess the damaged. He had a ruptured eardrum from the blast, I had to remove the lost kidney, and had re-inflated his lung after I drained all the blood and fluid out of it. It wasn’t hard to do, if you knew what you were doing, and I had studied it enough times to feel confident that I could do it. I drained all the fluids from his lungs, then closed off the wound and blew through his mouth and he was back to breathing much better, no longer gasping for air in his unconscious and vulnerable state. I used thin nylon thread from fishing line to stitch all his wounds, leaving a small tube in his lungs to let the rest of the fluids work their way out. The first time he was fully awake, he had moaned in pain and tried to pull out the tube in his chest. I had to hold his hands down and gave him another small dose of ibuprofen and some distilled herbal oils for his pain and swelling.   
I told him what happened and that I was looking after him, and I needed to know where to bring him. When he was finally able to talk and move his hands, he pointed on map I had laid out for him and I looked it over. It was a new, completely self-sustaining community, called Alexandria. His name was Ayden and his mom was the leader of the community. He had a brother named Spencer and a dad that had made 15-foot high walls around the place, made of steel and concrete, he was an architect. His mom was a politician and was good at reading people. Ayden normally led the runs from the community, but something had happened, he had panicked and his best friend had left him to die. His face burned with anger and he coughed hard, and I had to sedate him with some old chloroform I had found at a museum. It left him with an awful headache afterwards, but it worked well enough for me to operate on him without him squirming or screaming.


	4. Rick. Do it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya witnesses the death of Ayden's dad, and learns who is really in charge in Alexandria.

About a week or so after finding Ayden, I decided he was stable enough for me to take him to his home, and I would try to get in, or sneak in if I needed to. I pulled him in a well-oiled wagon from a kid’s toy store and he sat up, giving me directions to this Alexandria. The wagon rattled slightly over holes, and I would apologize to him for the bumpy ride, he still had to be in pain, but he just kept smiling at me and saying, “I should be apologizing to you for being such a bother. You’ve saved my life, first with the walkers, then stitching me up, and now your taking me home.” I just smiled at him in the setting sun. 

A few hours later, when the moon was high in the sky and the stars burned bright in the cloudless night, I smelt a bonfire going, a big one. Then saw something I never thought I would see again: the faint glow of electricity from lights and lamps. I pulled the young man behind me, excited to get in and found that something already had. Rotten flesh covered the bolt of the gate that hadn’t been closed and I looked at him and he looked terrified. “Mom?” he said and got out of his wagon and ran inside, despite my protests. His stitches were still tender and delicate and would rip if he wasn’t careful. I ran after him, and we both saw a man enter a fire pit area, holding a long samurai sword in his hands, talking to another man that was taller, with curly hair and intense blue eyes, wearing a police outfit. Ayden was in front of me as he ran around the corner, just in time to see the angry man brandish the sword around like it was his finger. Another, older man was telling him to put the sword down, and stood in front of the angry man, just in time for the sword to slit his throat.

“DAD!” Ayden yelled and ran for his dad, then Ayden fell down on the hard, slick ground and gripped his sides in pain, and I saw more blood leaking from his side. “dammit, Ayden, you ripped your wounds right open!” I yelled at him, angry that he was hurting himself, but also that he had ignored my warnings for his safety. I pressed my coat to his wounds and called for someone to bring me bandages and a doctor if they had one. Ayden writhed on the ground as he watched his dad die in front of him, everyone shocked that Ayden was still alive. 

The woman holding the dying man looked to the man with the police uniform on and said, “Rick. Do it.” The man pulled the trigger of his 44 magnum and sent a bullet into the head of the crazy man with the sword knocked down to his feet. I didn’t even flinch when the trigger was pulled and felt contempt for those that had no idea what it was like to see that, to actually live in this world. They screamed, cried, vomited and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at how pathetic it was, but kept working on Ayden as he grabbed at his side, tears running down his face. “Mom,” he said, reaching out for the blonde woman and the woman stood up and fell to her knees, still covered in her husband’s blood and touched the face of her son. “Ayden?” she said softly, touching his cheek, like she needed to know he was real and not just in her head. 

“I need you to hold pressure here, right here,” I said, moving her hands to his side as I pulled out the chloroform and put it over Ayden’s mouth. He hated the taste and the headache afterwards, but he no longer struggled when I did it. When he was out, I ripped open his shirt and looked at what he had done. He had ripped out most of his stitches, so I pulled out more fishing nylon and stitched him back up, aware everyone was looking at me and it was getting annoying.   
“Either help me or get the fuck out of my light,” I finally snapped to the people crowding behind me and someone ushered them away. I felt another woman coming to my aid, and she helped me stitch the ripped skin back together, looking at what I had already done and she looked impressed. She stood up as we wrapped Ayden in the bandages and he was carefully moved somewhere in the distance, the lights of the fire and the house blinding me for a moment as I stood up. I looked at myself, blood and a little bit of grass and dirt all over me, but I felt accomplished. I had saved his life again, I hoped.


	5. The First Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya meets Maggie and everyone learns Anya has no official medical training, and what she did for Ayden. The attention is too much for Anya, and she plans on leaving now, but a certain sheriff stops her.

I looked around and crossed my arms as the blue-eyed man looked me over and listened to what the pretty woman had to say about what she had seen while helping me. “Hello, I’m rick,” he said, extending his hand, which I slowly took, watching his face, my eyes still darting around to find the nearest exit. He waited for me to say my name but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It had been months since I had talked to someone that hadn’t out rightly wanted to kill me.   
“Anya,” I finally blurted out, a nickname I had gotten when the turn first happened. He looked at me oddly, then nodded to me and walked off, leaving the dead man in the campfire light to be picked up and buried later. “Well, Anya, if you will follow Maggie, she needs some information about how you treated Ayden,” he said and motioned his hand down the enclosed street and I looked to where he was pointing. The short blonde woman was holding the hand of Ayden, tears running freely down her face as she sobbed, both happy and sad at the same time. In the same few minutes she had lost her husband, but her son returned alive. I felt for her, I really did. It had to be one hell of an emotional rollercoaster.

Maggie tapped my shoulder and I grabbed my knife in reflex and heard the cocking of a gun behind me. I looked at Rick, who had his gun out already, his eyes intense and staring at me. I slowly put my knife in the holster and he lowered his gun and walked off. I watched him go to make sure he was gone. It was obvious who the real leader was, no matter what Ayden had told me.

I followed Maggie to another small house and walked inside to find a small group of people already in there. It looked like the mullet man I had seen in the industrial building was standing vigil over a dark haired unconscious woman with a well-wrapped head. Another pretty woman, Latina with pigtails and great body sat in the chair next to him and stared as they all came in. Ayden, hand held by his mother, 2 men carrying him and me with Maggie and a ring on her finger, that I suddenly noticed. It was odd that couples would survive the apocalypse intact, so I assumed it was a new marriage. Maggie turned to me and asked what I had done to Ayden for his wounds and looked at her then looked back at Ayden.  
“I used chloroform to knock him out after I got him free from the beams he was impaled on. I had to remove his right kidney, and the arteries and veins that led it so the blood wouldn’t pool and clot. Then I removed a piece of his liver that was shredded. That will grow back in a few months. I also had to suck out the fluids in his lungs, then re-inflate them. And a few others places needed stitches and work, mostly just surface or flesh wounds,” I said to the group around me, my arms crossed, and my hand on the hidden blade I kept in my shirt. 

“Where did you go to school?” the pretty Latina asked me and I looked at her and shrugged. “Never been to medical school,” I responded, looking at the people that were looking at me, then at Ayden as he came to, and he looked around.

“You need to stop rushing around like a shithead Ayden. Someone won’t always be around to rescue you,” I said to him with a hint of a smile and he looked at me and had a faint smile, then he started to cry and hold his mom, who also started to cry, from the loss of her husband and the return of her son. I still had my arms crossed as I looked them all over, then slowly made my way out. I wasn’t sure if I was going to remain here, and if I wasn’t, I would rob them blind if I could before I left. Not the nicest thing to do, but hey, I saved the leader’s son, what more do they want?

I made my way out of the house turned hospital and ran into 2 men, one of who I saw as the handsome Asian man from the industrial complex, and another man that looked beyond weak, and both were beat to hell. I looked them over as they left me in the darkness, the Asian man carrying the weak, and more injured, man into the hospital house. I heard someone shouting and then crying, and then a fight. I walked back in a hurry, not wanting to miss the action. Those men that just arrived had obviously left Ayden behind, thinking he was dead for over a week. Now, Ayden was in the hospital, recovering with his very angry mother beside him. 

“you left my son to die?! And the entire team that went with you? That fought with you? For you? You son of a bitch, Nicolas!” the mother said and I watched in amusement as the more injured weak man was hit across the face in a powerful backhand that was fueled by the rage of a grieving mother and wife. Maybe I would stay, if only for the soap opera that this place would provide me. I smile a little bit, leaning against the shadows of the door and Ayden looked at me and told everyone the story.

“She came right after Glenn tried to save me. Nick just left, ran off like a little pussy. Glenn tried to help me and almost got bit for it. She killed the deadies faster than I could blink and pulled me off those metal beams. I don’t really remember much else for the next few days. What I do remember is thinking, I’ve never seen someone move so fast against deadies, it was like she wasn’t even there and then she was. Then I woke up in a lot of pain, and I remember touching the stitches and bandages she had on me and she told me she had fixed me, but I was too weak to be moved yet. I couldn’t be moved until this morning, and she brought me here. She needs to be part of this place, mom. We need someone like her. She’s a fucking badass with a heart of gold,” Ayden added, looking at me and I smiled at him, faking doe eyes and put a hand on my heart. 

“Aw, you’re too kind, Ayden,” I said then looked away from them all, my smile fading fast, and panic starting to set in; everyone was looking at me, and I didn’t like it, not one bit. I walked away from the group and felt someone touch my shoulder. It was their mistake; I grabbed their hand in reflex and twisted hard, so their arm was almost out of its socket. I was behind them in a blink, holding their arm in a very painful vice, angling their bodies so they couldn’t see or touch me, my foot locked around their knees. In an instant, they were on the ground, eating a face full of dirty floor. I slowly let the woman up, and she looked at me with a pained expression on her face, her eyes tearing up. I had a hard time breathing with all the eyes on me, so I walked off, then started to run and made it to the gate, and pulled it open hard, but it suddenly slammed shut. 

“The hell?” I said in anger and heard someone cocking a gun behind me. I slowly raised my hands and someone removed all the knives and guns I had on me and a deep, southern voice told me to move. I walked towards the nearest house and came face to face with the same man that had killed that nut-job with the sword. He stood at least 6’, with intense blue eyes that were trying to stare into my soul and I stared back, glaring at him to make a move, just asking for a chance for me to knock him on his ass for threatening me. 

“You can’t leave, not tonight. You wanna leave in the mornin’ fine. But tonight you stay here,” he said to me and I bristled at someone was telling me what to do.  
“Like hell you threaten me like that. You ain’t my dad or my leader,” I spat at him and he instantly had my pinned to the wall by my neck and he looked me dead in the eye. 

“Leaving now would jeopardize these people in here, and they are what matter to me. Stay the night, and you will see how much you need this place as much as they need you,” he said to me in a raspy whisper, barely audible as he whispered in my ear. He let me slide down the wall as I held my throat, rubbing it in anger, then nodded. I would get him back later for that, but I’m a patient, cunning woman. I can wait for revenge.


	6. The First Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya faces her very first night in a community, her first night with other people in months, and she's beyond paranoid.

Maggie showed me around the house I would be staying in for the night and she looked out of place too. “How long where you out there before this place?” I asked, leaning against the counter of the massive and immaculate kitchen. She looked at me and said, “over a year. My group and I, we’ve been here ‘bout a month now. These people have been here since the beginning,” Maggie said and I could sense the same, but far less of it, disdain I had for them. 

“And yet you all are already running the place,” I said to her and she looked at me with a slightly surprised expression. “The moment I saw your ‘leader’ on the ground, then the man with the gun, I knew who was really in charge. Regardless of what Ayden may think, his mom isn’t fit to rule in a world like this. Charisma will only get you so far,” I said to Maggie and looked in the drawers and found some knives and pulled one out, touching the metal of it, liking how it made me feel. I set it back down in the drawer and looked at Maggie. “Well, someone will be over when the sun comes up with some things for you, clothes, food, things you’ll need. If you take a shower, limit the hot water to 20 minutes at a time,” Maggie said and I looked at her, slightly shocked.

“I know. I’m still not used to it yet. When I saw the faucet turn on the first day here and hot water came out, it was just…” Maggie trailed off, unable to put the odd, wonderful feeling into words. I turned to the kitchen sink and slowly pulled up the lever. Water streamed from the faucet full power; I just watched it for some time, then I turned it off. I would never get used to this, I wouldn’t let myself get used to this, it would make me weak. “I’ll see you in the mornin’, if you decide to stay,” Maggie said to me and I nodded to her. 

I looked around the house and saw it was fully furnished, with pictures of people on the walls. I took them all off and tossed them in the fireplace, removing any trace of someone living here before me. I couldn’t look at all the pictures and paintings and other shit on the walls, reminding me of the world before this. I stopped when I saw a picture of 3 little girls holding one another. I touched the glass of the picture and felt tears running down my face. Wherever they were, I hoped my little sisters were alive and alright.

I slipped into the shower, a knife from the kitchen not far from me, and enjoyed the water running over me, washing off walker blood and guts, dirt, and all kinds of grime. It had been over a year since my last real shower, and it was an odd feeling as I enjoyed the heat and moisture of the bathroom even when the water was off. I filled the tub and shaved all over my body, including my legs and pubic hair, cut my hair and bangs, then let myself soak in the slowly cooling water. My hands were pruney and gross, but I didn’t care. I washed my body and face I don’t know how many times, trying to get the year of layered muck from my body and enjoyed the feeling of being somewhat of a woman again. I tried to ignore the scar on my side, but my hands still touched it as I got up and dried off. I tried not to think about the night that I got it, the knife in my side, the screaming, the walkers, the invaders, all coming to take what they hadn’t worked for. They had decided I was the biggest threat to their victory, so I was attacked first. I remember the pain, the infection, the gunshots; I was suddenly on the floor, the knife in my hands, the blade cutting into my palm as I held onto it like a child might hold a stuffed animal. 

I got ahold of myself and stopped the bleeding and walked around the house some more, looking out the window and saw the leader talking to a handsome, rugged country boy with a crossbow on his back. I looked around more and saw that no one else was out, but lights were on in most of the houses and I shook my head. How someone hasn’t ransacked this place already was beyond me, especially if the morons all kept their lights on after dark. It was like a beacon to all walkers and bandits and murderer for miles around, a big bright target on them. 

I found a spot on the floor of a far back bedroom on the second floor that would allow me to get out really fast if I needed to, and I would slide right on the back porch roof and down to the ground. Although there were no walkers in this place, at least not anymore, there were people and people were much more dangerous. I didn’t sleep at all that night, choosing to sit up against a wall, with the kitchen knife in my hands as I ran my hands through my clean and oddly silky hair, touched my own recently shaved legs, an odd feeling. Hygiene often fell to the back of my mind when I was running from walkers and bandits. Every time I heard the leaves of the trees rustle too loud or someone walking in the house next to me, I would tense up and ready myself for a fight.


	7. Making a Case to Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Background for Anya and getting a feel for the community.

The sun came up hours later, sending warm light into the massive house, but I still felt oddly cold with my shaved body. I looked out the window and enjoyed the calm of it all for a moment, no annoying low moan of the walkers, or sounds of gunshots meant for my head. I looked down to the front door as someone walked up the front steps, but still jumped when the doorbell rang. I slowly made my way to the front door, not completely showing my entire body in front of it. Maggie stood on the front steps, a basket of clothes, toiletries and some food in her arms and she walked herself in as I looked behind her, my hand still on the kitchen knife then I set it down. There was no one with her, and her hands were too full to attack me. 

“I brought you somethings to use while you get settled. If you decide to stay, Rick and Deanna will want to talk with you about what you know and done.” I looked at her as she said this and I was still hesitant to move or do anything. She set the basket down on the kitchen island, and smiled at me with a patient and understanding look. “I was skeptical at first too, but so far this place has worked out well. 3 meals a day, a steady day of work, a warm bed, my family around me; as far as things in this world can be, it’s the best I have experienced since I lost my home,” Maggie said in her country-southern girl accent. 

“I know how that feels,” I said to her and she nodded. “My home was overrun by walkers a few months after the turn. I don’t think we would’ve lived if it wasn’t for Rick and Darryl and Glenn,” she said the last name with a different love in her voice and I felt a smile on my face. “That’s your husband then? Looks like he can kick ass,” I said it with a faint hint of laughter and admiration in my voice. I was also a bit jealous. Everyone seemed to have someone but me.   
“I trust him with my life,” Maggie said and I nodded to her. “Can’t ask for more in this world,” I said to her and she looked at me up and down for a moment. I said nothing but I wanted her to stop staring, I hated people looking at me. On the road for so long, not being seen is the best option for someone alone like me. She finally gave me a big smile and said that Rick would like to see me whenever I felt like leaving, but it needed to be before noon, he had work to do on the wall. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, brushing it all off, still unsure if I was going to stay or not. Maggie left the house and closed the door behind her and I watched her go and watched for someone else coming to door, or the sounds that someone else had come in the house while I was talking to her. There was nothing but the sounds of the breeze through the barely open windows and the knife in my hands quickly tapping the counter as I thought. I had no idea what I was going to do, and that was what terrified me the most. But they had taken my guns and knives, so all I had was my pack and the stuff from this house. I could always get the tour or something and when something happened, I could be gone in the blink of an eye. I could slowly accumulate things here in the house without anyone noticing, and if shit hit, I would gather it all up, take whatever else I might need and be gone. Either way, I was starting to think that staying here was my best option, my only option, at least for now. Sooner or later, those walls would come crumbling down and I would be gone.

I walked down the street, looking around at the people that looked at me; some looked at me like I was a monster, others looked at me like I was a god. Others didn’t seem to know who I was; I knew that cleaning up made me look like a totally different person. Who knew that under all that dirt and blood I had smooth, lightly tanned skin and blonde hair? I had actually forgotten my natural hair color. I had even tweezed my eyebrows, and I felt a little bit more lady-like as I walked around the streets, but I still felt the pull in my body, the pain in my chest, that I couldn’t let myself get weak, that this place would make me weak.   
I already felt odd, waking up and not immediately needing to stab anything in the head yet, and it was almost mid-day. I walked down the street leisurely and saw the same sheriff man from last night, dressed in new clothes, his hair clean and pulled back, his morning stubble not shaved away and I was taken at his eyes. He had intense, blue eyes, and he carried himself like he had seen a lot of shit, and done a lot of shit. He projected out confidence, but without seeming cocky or cold-hearted. To make the picture more perfect, he held the most adorable baby in his arms, a tiny thing, less than a year old, with wispy blonde hair and light eyes, who was babbling softly as he walked her around the front porch. 

I stopped a few feet from him and let him notice me. Not a good idea for me, a complete stranger, to walk in front of him while he held his baby girl. I could see the resemblance, mostly in the eyes, her eyes were blue, like his. The sheriff passed off his little girl to a teen boy that looked nothing like him, but I was guessing his son, by the way they talked to one another. I waited for him to introduce himself or something, or say something, but he just looked at me for a moment.

I heard a footstep behind me and in instinct, I grabbed their arm and flipped them around, sliding behind them and the country boy with the crossbow was on the ground, his arms pinned behind him painfully, unable to move, my knife pressed to his throat. I heard the click of a gun as I let the man up.   
“Sorry, reflex. You shouldn’t stand behind me. It’ll get you killed,” I said to him as I handed him back the bow I had taken from his back before he had been forced to the ground. He looked at me and took the bow back, then tried to swing at me in his anger, and I grabbed the bow from him again, and this time he was kneeling on the ground, a hard kick to his thigh and he wasn’t able to move his left arm. “What the fuck did you do?” he said as he tried to stand, and I could see he had swung back at me in reflex, much like I did. “I hit the nerve center in your arm. The feeling will be back in 20 minutes, give or take,” I said and helped put the bow back on him because he couldn’t move. The sheriff had his gun still trained on me as I helped the poor man to his feet and I smiled at him, but not really sorry. 

“Sorry. Old habits,” I said to him and rubbed his shoulder for a moment, he lurched back a bit at my touch, then realized he could move his arm again. “There, you should be good to go,” I said and he moved his arm around and walked into the house, still looking back at me. I heard the sounds of stifled laughter in the house and I knew he wouldn’t live it down for a long time. Rick was hiding a smile as he walked down the front steps and I took a half step back from him.   
“We met last night. I’m Rick, one of the constables here. Deanna asked me to talk to you, she thought I would get more from you than she would. And she won’t leave her son’s side,” he added and I nodded. “I’m sure. So, what are you going to try to get out of me?” I looked at him hard, trying to figure him out, but was also taken with his southern country drawl, his muscular body that showed through his white shirt under the opened blazer, and his intense blue eyes that were also sizing me up. 

“Deanna wanted me to talk to you in her house, and record it. Do you mind?” he said and led me down the street to one of the nicer houses and I stifled a snort; of course the leader always wants the best toys and nicest house. He saw the look on my face but didn’t say anything. I didn’t walk inside for a moment, the knife in my hands starting to get slippery form sweat, but when I didn’t see or hear anything that made me think I was in danger, I walked in and looked around. “I’m gonna try to get this damned thing to work,” Rick said under his breath as he looked at a small camera mounted on a tripod.


	8. Three Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick asks Anya his trademark 3 questions.

I sat in the chair the camera was pointed at, and looked around the place a bit more. Large windows with thin curtains let in a lot of nice, warm sunlight, the shelves were decorated with books, random statues and a single small nice quartz clock that ticked, and was starting to piss me off. I shoved the clock under the couch cushion. Rick finally got the camera to work. “Hated technology before the turn, still hate it now,” he said in his gruff voice and I smiled a bit. “Hell, I didn’t even own a phone at the time,” I said to him and he smiled. “A young woman with no phone, hard to believe,” he said and leaned back a bit as he looked at me, smiling at the thought of me, the only woman in a store or the mall without her face glued to her phone. “You miss a lot around you when your eyes are glued to a phone. I liked what happened around me more than I liked my phone. So when I lost it, I never replaced it,” I said, leaning forwards a bit, still ready to run and my body a bit tense. 

“I’m still like that, even now, a month in. Feel like everything can come crashing down in an instant, that something will come around the corner and try to kill me, or take everything I have,” Rick said and I felt the accusation in his voice. “I won’t take anything, Rick, unless someone or something makes me,” I said to him, a bit darker. We stared at one another for a moment and he leaned back a bit, and set his hand on his gun. 

“357 Magnum, big gun, loud, draws a lot of attention, form people and walkers, tells me a lot about who you are Rick,” I said to him, eyeing the very nice gun on his belt, wishing I could touch it. It looked so cool, but its recoil was a bitch and the noise was just as bad. “It tells me you know what you need to do, and you do it, no matter what the cost may be. You carry around something so big, because it makes a statement, more than a normal Glock or Barretta, even more than say a full auto might. It’s loud, powerful, can shoot through thick steel, and splatter a man’s brains all over their bodies. It’s a mess-maker of a gun, powerful, yet sleek, sexy almost. It’s all about the appearance of that gun, what it makes people think when they see it,” I said to him and I felt the faint curl of my lips as he started to show a little anger and annoyance at me. 

“What about you?” he said, pulling himself back from his mood. “I was engaged, now I’m not. I was living in Wisconsin, now I’m not. I was heading here from my home after it got taken by bandits and murderers, now I’m here in DC. And the reasons I came here aren’t here to meet me. I haven’t seen any of them. And odds are, I never will,” I said to him shortly and I was losing my patience with him. As awesome as I was sure he was once someone got to know him, I wouldn’t let myself get there, this place would fall, they always do. Not that I wouldn’t try to stay as long as I could, and maybe make it work as long as I could. But this place was too good from the outside for someone not to try to get it. 

“Let’s cut the bullshit that Deanna told you to ask me. You ask me what you want to know,” I said to him finally after several minutes of silence. He looked at me with a steely face and leaned forward and stared right into my face. 

“How many walkers have you killed?” he asked me and I shrugged. 

“Probably hundreds by now, I don’t keep track,” I said to him and he looked like he liked that answer. 

“How many people have you killed?” he asked me and I got quiet, surprised at his question. I took a deep breath, ready to lie, but there was no escaping what I had done, so I might as well come clean. 

“27,” I said softly. I imagined all their faces, every single one of them, even the ones I killed through a scope.

“Why?” he finally asked me after I had looked away from him, gathering myself, then looking back. I looked up at him and leaned forward so our faces were mere inches apart. 

“Because, they forced me to. They left me and my family no choice,” I said and leaned back a bit and he looked at me. “You’re not counting those that asked you to kill them?” Rick asked me and I lowered my gaze and shook my head. “I assume that’s the ‘why’ you were looking for. I killed my aunt and my dad because they had been bit, and they asked me to do it. But they were already dead before I shot them,” I said, my voice soft and quiet and I stopped, a tear leaking from my face as I reimagined them, their pain, the blood, the sadness. At least they had all had a chance to say goodbye.

Rick stood up and I was startled, grabbing my knife and holding it out in a defense position. “I won’t try to tell ya to relax, it’s a dumb thing to ask after everything ya’ve seen and done, but ya can’t have a knife in your hands all the time. Kids live here, and people that don’t know not to come up behind ya. They don’t know anything yet,” Rick said and I could sense the faint contempt in his voice. “Are you gonna teach them?” I asked him and his body stiffened. I knew he would try and he would try to make this place work, or he would take it. He would take it from them, because his people needed it, but I could just leave.  
“Did I answer your questions correctly?” I said, a bit too eager to get this moving along and he looked down at me, sensing my impatience. “Why, something else you want to tell me?” he said to me and I shook my head. “Nothing that I want to tell you, no. Unless you ask another question,” I said and he said nothing in return and I stood up beside the door, ready to run in case I had answered the questions wrong. He opened the door and a small smile came across his face and I couldn’t help but notice how nice his smile was, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. “Welcome to Alexandria,” he said to me and I nodded to him, then walked out and saw the crossbow man again and I waved a bit, and I heard more laughter in the background


	9. Adjusting and Hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya gets annoyed with everyone, especially Daryl when he brushes her off. She goes hunting by herself, and will find something to kill other than animals.

According to the rules of the place, everyone in Alexandria had a job to do, and they were assigned based on experience and abilities. I had told them that I was a decent hunter, but I was better with biology and herbology, preferring those methods to normal medicines that the world had once provided. No one assigned me something for the first few days, and I was told to get used to the whole situation, I was very different from the life I had lived for almost 2 years. I often forgot to take showers, jumped at sounds when someone came up behind me and made the kids, aside from Rick’s son Carl, afraid to come near me when I sent a guy flying that had playfully touched my ass. It was unwanted, and Rick had laughed a bit when I grabbed the guys arm, twisted it and sent him flying over my shoulder. Rick suggested I teach some of the residents how to defend themselves in close combat, but I wasn’t up for it yet. I really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Certainly not those privileged people that had never had to fight on the outside before. 

I still had no job a week after arriving at the place, so I decided to make my own, and besides, we were getting low on fresh food. I looked around and found Daryl, the best hunter in the group and decided to talk with him before he went off on his own again. 

“Daryl, you got a minute?” I asked him before he had a chance to get away from me. He looked up at me after talking with Glenn and he stood up, crossbow still on his back, and obviously, he hadn’t washed in a few days either, just like me. “Whatcha want?” he asked me gruffly and I ignored the shortness in his voice as I looked at him then at the gate.

“The deer are good right now; I saw a few trails while wandering around. I was hoping you’d come with me, in case we got something big.” I was ashamed to admit that I couldn’t really carry the deer that I kill. Even a dressed deer could weigh 100lbs, and if we got a big buck, I wouldn’t have the strength to carry it all the way back. 

“Can’t,” he said shortly to me and I looked at him; was he avoiding me on purpose or was he doing something important. “You sure? I’ll need to leave a bunch of meat behind if I get one,” I said to him and he looked at me, long bangs in his face and he walked off. Really, that was it? I raised an eyebrow at him as he turned a corner and I just grunted in anger and frustration then went to the armory alone. 

“If you get a boar, can I have a leg? I cure meats when we get enough,” Olivia said to me before I left, a small pistol and rifle with a scope on my back, a small bag on my hip and my bow and arrows on my shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind if I get lucky,” I said as I looked at her, confused. There weren’t a lot of wild hogs this far north. I had enough food for a few days, but since I knew what I could eat and what I couldn’t touch for plants, it was fine. I walked out the gate, taking a small scooter that someone had put together before I had arrived, and headed off, away from the group and the city for the deep woods I had come from.

The trip to the spot I was thinking of hunting on was uneventful, though the scooter wasn’t the quietest vehicle. I left the scooter in a small drainage area, covered in vines, dirt and crap and thanked that the gas gage was broke, so it always showed empty. I left it there and walked into the woods, listening for walkers and people, and looking for signs of deer and other larger animals if I could.

A few days into my hunt, I had bagged, skinned and cleaned 12 squirrel, 5 rabbits and a turtle, but had yet to find some sign from a deer trail. I was starting to lose hope, and thought about just heading back to the scooter and come back with what I got when I heard the sounds of something coming my way. I slid behind a tree and listened, then heard the faint sounds of several small things moving in the leaves. I peeked around the corner and saw that a tiny herd of deer was moving through the leaves, quiet, forced off their normal path by walkers, no doubt. I watched them for a moment, admiring their beauty for a moment, then quickly notched an arrow and fired it at the largest buck. The others fled as the buck tried to run, but barely made it a few yards before it fell, dead. I quickly drained all its blood, removed the inedible organs, then tried to put it in a tarp and get out of the area. The smell of blood would attract walkers from all over and I didn’t want to be there when they arrived.

I had been right to ask for Daryl’s help; I couldn’t lift the damn deer even with all the blood and half its organs removed. The lungs, intestines and stomach, everything digestive, couldn’t be eaten safely, but the kidneys, liver, heart and some other major organs could all make some good food if done right, a nice stock for some soup, some stew, even bait for other animals. I knew I was running out of time as I heard the walkers coming in from all sides, and decided to try something I had seen on TV years ago. I slit the legs so the skin was separate from the bone, broke the lower legs off to save weight and slid my arms into the holes I had made, essentially turning the 80+ pound deer into a more manageable backpack. It took a moment for me to stand up, using a tree and my gun as support, but I stood up and was able to kill the few walkers that had descended on me while I had fussed with the deer. I walked off, carrying everything that wouldn’t fit on my back in my arms and made my way back to the scooter.


	10. Killing in the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya gets cornered by 4 men in the woods, and has to manipulate them in order to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence, gore, murder.  
> It's the Walking Dead, what do you expect?

Sweat poured down my face as I walked in the heat of the day back to the scooter and I thought that I wouldn’t make it before nightfall. But I couldn’t stay out here on my own for the night with a bloody sack of meat on my back. Walkers could smell blood for miles, especially upwind, so I continued walking even when the sun started to set in the woods. Fortunately, I could see the road that I had left my scooter on as the sun set and I hurried my steps, until I heard it. I heard someone talking not far away from me, and I had to duck down, careful not to make noise or fall over as I knelt with the deer on my back. I heard a faint noise behind me and I spun around, but the deer unbalanced me and I fell back, losing the grip I had on a tree and landed on my ass. A single man stood over me, early 40's maybe, ugly with dirt, blood and a horrid look on his face. He laughed loudly and the other men in the area came to his voice as I tried to get free of the deer, but a knife at my head made me think otherwise. 

“Looky what I found. She even brought us some food,” the grinning man said and I looked around. There were 4 men in the group, all thin, lustful as they looked at me and one of them grabbed my gun away from me. Fortunately, I had hid the small pistol in the back of my pants when I went hunting, so I knew I had that there, and one of my hands touched it carefully as I looked at them. Maybe they would just take my food and shit and move on, but I knew they had other plans when one of them touched my face. 

“She sure is a pretty one, Lucas. Nice find. And she can hunt, don’t see that much in coos,” he said with a thick New York accent and I felt myself burning in anger over what he had called me. “Oh, you made the lady angry, don’t do that Nick,” Lucas said and touched my shoulder and I fought hard not to grab his hand and break all the bones he had in it. I needed to play this smart, and that meant not showing all my cards until I knew how to play them. 

The man named Lucas let my shoulder go and stood up. “I found her, I get first dibs,” he said and my eyes flashed in anger as I realized what he was talking about. “Now hold on, Lucas, we shouldn’t upset the lady right away. Look at what goodies she has on her, no way she had no group that won’t miss her. Maybe she’s special, a special lady hunter, special enough to get us in,” the leader said and I looked at him, trying to keep a blank face as I did. 

I knew my face wasn’t showing anything as they looked at me carefully, trying to read me. The leader knelt down next to me with a fake smile on his face. These men were very dangerous, I could tell, they would rape and kill me once they knew here the community was, and then they would rob it blind and kill everyone. The leader smiled at me and said, “So sweetie, you got 2 choices here. Take us to your camp and we let you live, or don’t show us the camp and we leave you barely alive, but just alive enough to feel the pain and blood of your body when the dead come for you. And we take all your goodies, regardless of what option you pick. If you show us your camp, I promise that someone with your skills will be treated real nice, maybe be the queen. How’s that sound, baby, you wanna become a queen?” he said to me in his fake nice voice and I looked at him, my mind already made up and I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again, faking my confusion. In a quiet and rather meek voice, I said, “well. I…I don’t really like our current leader. He’s a jerk, and his second is an even bigger jerk. You know I asked him to come with me to help me carry this deer, and he ignored me and treated me like I was some walker goo he had stepped in.” I was faking the anger and sadness in my voice as I rambled on, acting like a naïve girl that had no idea what these mean would really do if they found the community. “If you become the new leader, will I really be second?” I looked at him as I saw their faces turn slightly. 

“Someone as pretty and special as you deserves something as special as being the queen. My queen,” he said and I forced down shudder as he touched my chin softy, obviously trying to get on my good side. “But will you hurt me after the leaders are gone? Like him?” I faked tearing up as I looked down, but inside I was laughing. “You will be number 2, always, my queen. I won’t hurt you when I have the camp. In fact, since that asshole didn’t help you with hunting, we can show you that we’re different. Lucas, help the lady with the deer. It must weigh as much as she does,” the man was faking concern as his fingers traced on my jaw line and I tried to not bite off his fingers, but managed to hold still as Lucas helped me to my feet and pulled the heavy buck off my shoulders. 

“Thank you,” I said to him as sweetly as I could, then pulled out my gun and shot him in the stomach, and then fired off 2 more rounds into the other men before they had time to react. The final man, the leader, slashed at me with his knife and I shot him in the head, then took a breath and stabbed them all in the head as I looked around, listening for the walkers that would come. The men were dead, all 4. I bent down to get the deer back on my back, then felt the pain in my side and saw the leader had stabbed me. I pressed a rag to the wound, still got the deer on my back and took all the weapons and things the men had, including their backpack, which helped carrying the few things they had. I ignored the pain as I walked off, kicking the leader in my anger that he had stabbed me, and walked back to the scooter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know she seems heartless and vile, but her ability to manipulate is key for the entire collection, and one of her greatest assets.


	11. Wounded Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After killing her attackers, and seeing the W on their foreheads, Anya hurries home. But her scooter and infected wound mess things up. When she returns to the community, she brings to light many of the flaws of Alexandria and it's people.

Walkers were starting to come to me, but fortunately, the scooter hadn’t been touched and I fired it up, the buck heavy on my back as I rode back. The scooter was weighed down hard as I rode it slower than before and some walkers could touch me as I rode past, but I was able to either jerk away or shoot them. The scooter was starting to act up and I realized too late that the gage hadn’t been broken, I had been riding on empty for most of the journey, and now I was out of gas, at least a day’s walk from the community. I got off the scooter and kicked it in anger then started walking, as fast as I could with the weight on my back and shoulders.

I made it maybe a mile or so before it got too dark for me to see much, so I sat in a burned out car, the rotted shell of doors slightly open so I could escape if I needed to. I didn’t light anything too big, but cooked some of the squirrel I had prepped earlier in a small empty can with a tiny fire in the bottom. The warm food was nice, since the night had gotten oddly cold and I could feel the heavy scent of fall on me as I looked around in the darkness. It would be winter soon, and I doubted that the community had enough food to last the entire winter to feed everyone. I might need to leave after all, when the food started to run out, because once it did, the people that were normally all nice and accepting would become angry, desperate, and would turn on those that had come in last, which was me, and Rick’s group. I hadn’t gotten attached to anyone in the camp as of yet, so I wouldn’t be sorry to leave if I needed to when their lack of thought bit them in the ass. Eventually, it wouldn’t be possible to find food already in cans and boxes, because it would be bad or gone. I knew that, I had seen it happen before at a previous small camp, and the anger and resentment that had flowed had been deadly. And what people hadn’t been killed by their once friends had been killed by the walkers that had come in after the firefight. 

As I sat and ate silently, listening for someone or something coming, the moon came out from behind the clouds, and it was a full bright moon and I figured I could go a mile or so in the nighttime, get closer to the community before the meat went bad. Despite the odd feeling I knew it was, I didn’t want to let the group down since they had taken me in, and I needed to bring them the food I had gotten, regardless of the cost on me. It was an odd feeling, putting others before me again, I hadn’t done that since the beginning, but before the turn I had been a very selfless person and enjoyed giving what I had to others when I could. That was ultimately my downfall. I ignored the feelings as they threatened to come back to me and I walked on, careful and quiet as the moon blared its cool light on me, bright enough for me to see a quarter mile ahead of me. 

I walked the road, back the way I had come, and before I knew it, the sun was coming up. I stopped and made some more squirrel to eat, since it would spoil before the food I had brought with me would. I cooked it up quickly and walked off, the shell of the turtle still painful on my back, but it looked so cool I didn’t want to leave it behind and knew I would use it for something. I walked for the entire day, and finally started to see things I recognized, like the cars the group left outside the gates as a makeshift barricade, and knew I was almost there. It was a good thing, because I knew that the stab wound in my side was getting infected, and my own medicine that I had applied from the plants I had found weren’t going to be strong enough. I needed the more potent medicines from my bag I had left in the hospital house.

It was past midday when I made it in sight of the gates, and I was relieved because everything hurt. The bones of the buck had dug into my shoulders deep enough to bruise, and the stab was painful, hot to the touch, and agitated as my shirt rubbed against it. The gate slid open as I got near it and I saw Daryl and Glenn run out to meet me. “Thank you,” I said as they pulled the painful deer off my back and I leaned forward, relieved at the lack of weight. “What happened to the scooter?” Olivia asked me as I entered the community and the gate slid shut behind me. “Ran outta gas a day’s walk away. Not worth going back for it. Ran into some unfriendly men on the way back, so it’s not safe to head back that way. Walkers will be all over that place now,” I said as I stretched then fell in pain, gripping my side. I pressed on the wound, but it was bleeding fresh and smelt putrid; I had ripped open the scab when I had stretched. Maggie came over and helped me to my feet and walked me to the hospital house. I turned back to the men behind me and said, “I got some squirrel, rabbit and a turtle too. I’m making some turtle soup tonight!” I tried to laugh then grabbed my side in the pain and was helped back to the hospital house. 

When I got the steps, I realized that I couldn’t take the steps up to get inside. I braced myself against the railing and pushed myself up against it, but fell back in pain, landing on my back in the street against, gasping for air. The infection was taking its toll on me and it was hard to move the area at all. Maggie tried to help me up, then some strong, smelly arms picked me up bridal style and carried me into the house, despite my protests. “I can do it myself, I got everything back on my own, even with 4 murderous SOBs along the way. Put me down!” my arguments fell on deaf ears.   
Daryl carried me inside and to the nearest bed and laid me down carefully, and Maggie looked at the stab wound on my side. “it’s a flesh wound, but it’s really infected,” Maggie said and I nodded. “I know. Bastards didn’t clean their knives, so I was afraid of this. At least I got back here. Can you hand me my red bag, the one with the jars in it?” I sat up, ignoring Daryl and Maggie handed me my bag and I fished in its many glass jar contents and found my favorite mix for infections. I looked back at Maggie and she looked it over as I set it on the side table and picked up a paper from the bag, covered in instructions and illustrations. 

“Alright, can you bring me some clean, boiled water, a cup, a strainer and some bandages, please?” I’m asking Maggie really nicely, and she nods to me, and I knew she recognized at least one of the flowers and roots that I had in the mix. It was my own concoction for bad infections: yarrow root, white willow bark, Calendula and lavender, and a few rarer herbs in it made the perfect combination of anti-inflammation, anti-septic, and healing properties. It also smelt so good, which was odd for herbs; it had a lot of lavender, and some citrus oils, in the mix. I boiled the mix in water, drank the tea after I strained it, and smeared the pulp onto the bandage to the wound after Maggie helped me open it up wide. She had to remove a piece of bark from the wound, that was intensely painful and got a lot of curses from me, but when it was all over, I felt better. The wound was flushed clean and left open to drain, the herbs where doing their work on the infection, and the pain was slowly fading as the pressure and heat of the infection slowly faded. 

I leaned back as I took deep, long breaths, aware that a lot of people were looking at me. “What?” I saw they looked rather sad and my first thought that it had been too long for the meat. “Don’t tell me the meat is bad already? Dammit, I couldn’t walk any faster,” I said, being rather hard on myself, I hated losing.   
“No the meat is fine, we thought you’d left,” Rick said and I looked at him. 

“It’s not like the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but there isn’t a reason for me to leave right now. Come winter, that might be different,” I said, pointing my finger at him and he looked at me with an odd expression. “What, do you really think you have enough food right now for everyone here to live through the winter? None of you think about a month from now, a year from now. What happens when you can’t find anymore good meds, or IV’s, or if someone needs surgery and they need a lot of blood or we get attacked and you need to do more than one surgery at a time. What if one of the women gets pregnant and they need a C-section? Does anyone know how to help both baby and mother survive?” I stopped immediately as I saw the look on Carl and Rick’s face. Now I understood what happened to Judith’s mother. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make my point any less valid. Rationing and the walls are great, but it won’t get us through a bad snowstorm that kills power and heating in the houses, walkers coming in such numbers they knock down a wall, or an attack from an organized group. I ran into a few from the same group you’ve had trouble with in the past, the ones with the W on their foreheads. The walls can’t protect us from an enemy that can think,” I finished and knew I had finally gotten to some of the less hardened residents. They knew I was right, no matter how much I wanted to be wrong.

“Okay,” Rick said and gripped my shoulder, but I moved away from the touch in reflex, then he turned to the group in general. “Alright tomorrow, let’s all meet together at Deanna’s around noon. We’ll brainstorm some long-term ideas there. Until then, you need to rest, the rest of us need to work on that meat Anya brought back.” He turned form the group and talked with Daryl and Maggie about drying the food. I felt exhausted as I leaned back into the softness of the mattress and found myself asleep before they had left the house.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick holds a meeting after Anya's rant to brainstorm about the impending winter, and the future. Anya reveals some of her past

The next day was bright and cheery, sunny without a cloud in the sky and I smiled as I stood up and looked out the window at it. Despite the sun, the wind was a bit nippy, and I knew that the weather made it seem more like October. That meant it was over 2 years since the turn. A lot had happened in 2 years. Tara came in the house and interrupted my thoughts and she smiled at me and she helped me change the dressing and apply new herbs. It didn’t take long for them to work, and already the swelling was going down from the double doses I was taking, the application on the wound, and the tea. It was doing wonders and I felt a lot better. I could walk up and down stairs on my own now, and was relieved no one needed to carry me. 

Tara still supported my shoulders as I walked down the steps to go to the meeting. They would share their ideas over a joined lunch, and someone had cooked the large turtle I had returned with, mixing it with some celery, carrots and other canned veggies form the pantry. There was some bread, some potatoes and other good food as I sat next to Tara, who was now the only person I really liked. I didn’t want to get attached to anyone, but Tara was so nice, and smart, and made me smile. She looked at me and smiled as we sat at the floor together. I could see in her eyes she was interested in me, and though I had a male preference, I was open to anything. I missed the feeling of being with someone, of feeling like they were the one person that made me whole, that completed my soul. One of my sisters was already married, though I didn’t know if they were still alive. My other sister was dating a young man that looked a lot like a young Justin Timberlake, like when he was in N’Sync. I smiled to myself and slowly pulled out the only picture I had of them. It was old, from Shelby’s wedding, and I was much bigger in it.

Tara looked over my shoulder and smiled at the picture. “Are they your sisters?” “huh? Oh, yeah that’s Shelby,” I pointed to the one that was getting married with long, flowing black hair that clashed wonderfully with her wedding dress, with big, green eyes and massive smile on her face. “and that’s Demi,” I said pointing to the maid of honor, the sister that shared my blonde hair and blue eyes. We all had the same nose, but I looked at myself and I felt a bit of shame. “That’s the groom, Shelby’s husband, Danny, he’s an avid hunter, he and Daryl wound get along great. And that’s Tyler, but we all him JT.” “Because he looks like Justin Timberlake?” Tara said and I laughed, the first time I had laughed in months and I nodded. 

“Yep. He gets so much crap from everyone for it. My sister loves it, and loves even more that Tyler has the same great body as Timberlake. He hunts and fishes too, got her into fishing. She learned how to gut and bone a fish from him, I was so proud. She was a prissy princess when we were younger, but she loves the fishing, especially with him. Shelby would never go hunting, she’s a vegetarian; even when the world ended she’s still a vegetarian. Drove Danny and me up the wall when she wouldn’t eat the meat we managed to get, even when she was hungry,” I smiled and put the picture away. 

“Was the larger woman your mom?” Tara asked and I felt myself blush, a bit ashamed. “No, that’s me 4 years ago. I was about 100lbs overweight, and had issues, but after an…incident…I changed everything. The doctors thought it was PTSD, and claimed I was suffering from paranoia, but it all came in handy when the world changed and the dead stopped dying.” I said, and I felt the embarrassment on my face, but Tara didn’t press the subject, seeing how sensitive I was about it. We ate the rest of the meal in silence, but I could tell everyone would glance a bit at me, either respect or fear. I didn’t care either way.

“Alright, let’s get started. Anya made a good point yesterday about planning ahead. The Wolves are a threat we will need to face eventually, and winter isn’t far off. Anyone have ideas for what we need to do?” Rick looked at the group around him and I looked at them too. They had no real idea what to do, then Maggie spoke up.

“We should till some land for crops next year. It’s a waste of time to till land in early spring, and damn near impossible. Deanna was drawing up some plans, I can talk to her about it,” Maggie said. 

“Considering the decreased level of sunlight in the winter, it would be prudent to construct some other alternatives for power before snowfall. I suggest some windmills attached to a battery array, at least a mile away from the walls, and then have them picked up once fully charged. Using alternators from nearby vehicles, pulleys, belts and gears, I could fashion a few rudimentary windmills within 2 weeks,” Eugene spoke rather fast, like if he didn’t, he would lose the courage to speak and I looked at him.

“What about that solar place you guys have been going to? Bet they would have some DC/AC converters. And we could make a few bikes to run like those windmills here in the community. You know, just in case,” I said and smiled at him; he was very smart, but he had apparently lied about something when he first met his group, and he had lost a lot of respect and confidence as a result. But there was no denying he was a smart man, just not very physical, or useful for anything other than his intellect.

Rick was nodding to everyone as they spoke and Jessie, his girlfriend I think, was taking notes behind him though she still looked like she hadn’t slept since her husband had been shot. I knew she was trying to deal with it, with 2 boys she needed to deal with it, and from what I had heard, the man had been abusive to her and her boys. Apparently, her older son, Ron, could no longer lift his left arm over his head from an injury his father had given him.

“We should also think about medical supplies and shoring up for winter in general. Mating season for deer is about to start, so we have a few weeks to hunt better than we will for the rest of the year. Some larger fish also move around in the rivers this time of year. If Daryl and someone else go hunt deer, I can take someone fishing. I think there is a lake a day’s ride from here, sporting lake if remember the maps right. We stay there a few days, fish as much as we can and dry whatever we catch before it goes bad, we should have enough meat for everyone from late November until spring thaw, give or take a few weeks. And for long-term medical, I can start by finding herbs to plant and growing those. We can use those on a regular basis and save the strong medicines for emergencies like surgery or war,” I said to the group in general but rick knew I was talking about the wolves. They would come eventually, and I knew it, he knew it, everyone that had a brain knew it, so none of the pre-Rick members. I smirked at my own thought.

“I want you to get to work on that right away. Daryl, you and I also need to work on some towers for the wall, some sentry posts, and everyone needs to be part of that now. I’ll start teaching everyone here that wants to learn how to shoot. Anya, I’d like you to teach everyone how to defend and attack up close,” rick said to me and I nodded.

“My skills are more meant for women than men, but anyone that wants to learn…well, given the Wolves threat everyone should want to learn,” I said, looking around at everyone as I said that and watched their faces. I knew most of them weren’t ready for what was coming to us, the attack I could feel was coming soon.


	13. Anya and Daryl in a Fight Demo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one a fun one, as Anya shows some fighting techniques to most of Alexandria. And Daryl is her sparring partner.

It had been over a week since that meeting and I had started teaching basics to most of the members of the community, especially the women and the younger men. Jessie even made an appearance for the first class and I showed the basic arm block, how to stop a fist, how to put someone in a choke-hold, and how to properly throw a punch. It was fun for me to walk through everyone as they learned, and I would turn someone’s arm or body as I corrected their stance. This was the 4th meeting, something I was doing every day, and I had thought that they deserved a fun treat.

“Alright, everyone gather round. I wanna show you what you can actually do with enough work and practice,” I spoke loudly as everyone in the entire community, except those on watch, gathered in the small park to watch. “Daryl has volunteered to be my test dummy for the day, and I promise you will be in one piece when I am done, but I can’t promise your pride will be in one piece,” I said and I heard snickers, mostly from his friends and the ladies. I motioned for Daryl to come at me with a piece of wood that was meant to be a knife and I bent his arm under itself, I turned around to be behind him, and pinned myself behind him, his arm contorted painfully behind him and I drew a thumb across his throat. “Less than a second and he’s dead,” I said as I let him go and he rubbed his shoulder.

“I did warn you, you know,” I said to him as he rolled his shoulder slightly. “Now, this time, I will show you worst case scenario: he has just seen me, and he has a gun,” I said to the group at large and I stood about a yard away from rick as he looked at me, a little afraid. “Try to draw you weapon on 3,” I said and I counted down. When I hit 3, I lunged at him as he tried to grab his gun, but I grabbed it from him, and with a powerful kick, I spun him around on the spot and now had the gun to his temple. “That’s a very advanced move, it took me over a year to get it right, but it’s cool to see how someone unarmed can attack someone with an obvious advantage.”

I handed Daryl back his gun, which he had emptied before the demonstration because I had asked him to. It was too risky for me to point the loaded gun for the demos. “now, another worst case scenario, ladies this one is for you. Bad guy sneaks up behind you and grabs you before you can reach your weapon,” I said and turned my back to Daryl, and he snuck up behind me and wrapped his arms tight around my body and shoulders, trying to hold me down. Despite being in a demo, I felt a tingle as I smelt his scent on me. I still grabbed onto his arms, leaned myself back, my feet leaving the ground and I leaned forward with a mighty thrust and Daryl flew over my head, and landed on the ground on his back in front of me with a loud oof. Everyone erupted into laughter as I walked over to Daryl and motioned for him to stay there.

“So once they’re on the ground, you can’t leave them there, because he’ll recover fast, faster than it takes for you to run away. So you can stomp on a few places of his body. His chest is not the best, its hard to do real damage there, so focus on the lower body. Below the ribs is a good one, it’ll knock all the breath out of him for a while and its very painful,” I said to the group and pointed with my hand as I knelt down next to him, showing them where to stomp. I pulled back my hand and said, “the gut is a good one too, that will cause him to vomit and lose his breath, and if you stomp hard enough, internal bleeding.” I showed them all the best place for kicking with my hand, though I knew he had hard abs and it would be hard to cause damage because of the muscle there.

“And for all you ladies, there’s the obvious cockshot,” I said, my hand pointing between his legs, not getting near his nether regions, I knew he would clam up on me if I did. All the ladies erupted into laughter. “okay, so we’re going to practice a few basic repelling techniques, so pair up with someone, and be careful, we don’t want any accidents,” I said to them and helped the wincing rick to his feet. “Anything hurt?” I asked him and he shook his head. “My pride a little,” he said with a smile and I smiled back. “Nothing could hurt that, everyone needs and respects you too much,” I said and shut my mouth, I couldn’t believe I said that. I turned to the nearest couple and they were trying to flip each other and I stopped them before they hurt themselves.

“Daryl, if you will come at me again please,” I said and he looked mad, like he didn’t want to be my test dummy anymore. I nodded to him I knew he didn’t like to be touched, and he didn’t like being shown up either. “Okay, you’re turn Daryl, show us what you got, and don’t hold back, you won’t hurt me,” I said and I saw the look in his eyes. He wasn’t worried about him hurting me anymore, he was afraid what I would do to him. He came at me swung hard and I was able to dive to the side, to the other side, then when he swung around again, I rolled under his arm and was behind him. 

“That’s an easy technique to learn, it lets you get out of your attacker’s sight, and you can attack from this position easily,” I pulled a stick from my boot, meant to be a knife, and touched him on the back of his knees. “A knife to the back of the knees and he won’t walk right ever again. You can also get any place on his legs and he’s limping for his life, but the backs of the knees are the best and most efficient place of attack,” I said to them and turned to Daryl again.

“Alright, final demonstration. He’s landed a punch, and you’re dazed, bleeding and hurt,” I said and he looked hesitant to hit me. “it’s alright, Daryl, I won’t get payback, promise,” I said with a smile and he sneered a bit at me. “Consider it payback for me making you look bad in front of your friends my first night here,” I said and I saw the look on his face change a little bit. He remembered it, I could tell, and he wasn’t happy he had been beaten in a fight, and so quickly. He swung at me, hard as he could, and I knew he expected me to duck, but I didn’t.

Everyone gasped as I fell onto the ground, clutching my nose as I bled. My nose felt a little out of place, and I could tell my eyes were going to swell a little bit. I looked up at Daryl, who stood there, horrified, and when he took a step towards me and leaned down, I thrust up my hand, stopping right before his nose.

“Like what Daryl did, aim for the nose. If anyone’s ever been in a real fight before, you know how much a busted nose hurts. If you can’t reach the nose, aim for the windpipe, knees, ankles or anything that’s a weak spot on the body, mostly the joints. Or you can always go for the tried and true cockshot,” I said. My voice was thick as blood pooled down my face, dribbling down and I stopped it with a rag from my pocket.

I put everyone in pairs and told them to practice the last technique, attacking from the ground. I walked the pairs and they looked at me, bloody nose and bruising eyes, but I felt accomplished. Daryl looked angry with himself, but I had no ill feelings for him. I patted him on the back and smiled at him, and I felt him pull away from me. He normally hated being touched too.

“Well done everyone. We can meet again tomorrow for more techniques same time. Afterwards, Rick is taking everyone shooting that wants to go. I’ll be attending it too,” I said and the ladies all nodded to me and walked off, one of them rubbing her swollen nose but still gave a smile and thumbs up. I had put a yarrow leaf in her nose and the bleeding had stopped almost instantly.

watched everyone leave and I saw Daryl had remained behind, and he touched my nose to see how bad it was, but I moved his hands away gently. “It’s alright Daryl, I’m not mad, promise,” I said and felt my own nose, then gripped both sides of it and pushed it back into place with a faint sickening crack and I gritted my teeth for a moment in pain. I saw Daryl cringe a little bit as I put my nose back in place, but I couldn’t blame him, it was a pretty gross sound. I breathed through my nose a little bit and felt satisfied. I smiled at Daryl, who was still looking rather guilty and I smiled and nodded to him, then patted his arm once, trying to let him know there were no hard feelings. This time he didn’t pull away from my touch. He looked odd, his eyes clouded over a bit, and I was worried he felt far worse than I did, until I felt the heat coming off him, and realized what he was feeling. I didn’t say anything, look at him accusingly, or look down. It would make him very self-conscious. But inside I was smiling, and a little proud of myself.

“That was a great demonstration, Anya. The women have a lot of respect for you,” I heard rick say and I looked at him. Daryl nodded to his best friend and walked away, and I could tell he would be sore in the morning. I looked back at Rick as Daryl disappeared from view.

“Women like it when we are empowered and kick ass, even if we won’t admit it. It makes them feel strong and in control; that’s not something we have a lot of in this world,” I said and he nodded to me. “But you’re wrong on the respect area. Everyone respects you more than me, even if they don’t show it. You ooze leadership, you’re smart and tactical, you think long term and you take other options into consideration, rather than being a dictator. And it doesn’t hurt that your hot,” I said, then shrugged as he gave me a look. “Just saying, Rick. You look the part, and that’s important too.”


	14. Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The community sees Anya in a new light, as a role model to like, rather than a stranger to be feared. Anya increases her feelings for Tara, but tries to fight those feelings and her feelings for the life inside the walls.

“I gotta make more meds for the hospital before dinner,” I finally said as he looked at me and we contemplated one another in silence. I walked to the hospital and felt him looking at me before he walked away and I felt embarrassed that I had spoken like that, but it was true. Aesthetically speaking, Rick was hot with his piercing blue eyes, tall, lean body, muscular arms and his deep, gravelly voice, basically his entire demeanor. Too bad he was in a relationship with Jessie.  
I was in the hospital house for hours, making and mixing more herbal mixes for common issues like colds, cuts and scrapes, smaller injuries and even some larger ones like flesh wounds or cuts that would need stitches. I spent most of my time on pain and antibiotic mixes, labeling them in detail. I had made over 20 bottles of mixes with the herbs I had found in the countryside and what I had brought with me, but it wouldn’t be enough for winter, I knew that. I would need to go out again and get more, and go fishing too, before it got too cold.

I was talking with Olivia about what weapons to bring because I had a different idea. About 2 days south of the community there were woods that were notorious for wild boar; it would be a long drive, but if I took some people with me and we left and hunted for about a week, we could get enough food to last the entire winter and into spring. Wild boar were mean, fast and annoying little shits, but they had a lot of meat on them if you got a big one. If I took a few people with me, we could get lots of meat. I had run the idea by Rick and Daryl and they said I could go, if I took Daryl for the best chance at success, and a few other people. I wanted to take Tara, for more personal reasons, but we couldn’t take her and me from the hospital house. So I elected to take a new guy, Mike, who said he had hunted once or twice in his life. He would stay by the vehicle so we had a way to get back to Alexandria, while Daryl and I hunted in the woods for whatever was in there. 

I knew he felt bad about not coming with me last time, considering what I had run into as a result, and the pain I had endured because I had to bring the deer back alone. I had told him and Rick the entire story, even the parts where I had made fun of Rick and Daryl, badmouthing them and Daryl didn’t like it, I knew it, but he did deserve it. 

Tara thought it was funny when I had told her as we shared a small glass of wine, and we laughed hard when I told them the lies I had told those men on the road. How they had tried to be mean, then tried to make it seem like I was a princess going to be queen, and how I had totally played them a fool. Tara and I had become close, because we both were often in the hospital house, and I since I learned she as a lesbian, I felt like I might find something in her, more than a friend. Though I had a male preference, I was bi, and had changed from one gender to another since middle school. Tara could tell, and since I had been to check on her in the hospital with her concussion, we had grown close.

The story had spread from word of mouth and most of the women of the community couldn’t get enough of the story, how funny it sounded, how the men could have been so stupid, and how I had played them right where I wanted them. It was true, I had played them like a fiddle, and I loved that part of it. I could be a very manipulative bitch.

Rick could tell that all the women of the community, even Deanna, would listen to me before they would listen to Rick. A woman named Ethel had asked me at a meeting if I had considered the men’s offer and I had laughed at that idea. “Even if they weren’t lying through their teeth, I never would lead them back here. This place is too special for them to ruin. Besides, they would kill or rape everyone here, or rape and kill them, or kill and then rape them. Never know what nutjobs are into nowadays,” I said and I got a few chuckles. I had grown to like this place, though I knew it wouldn’t last forever. It never did.


	15. Just One Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Anya and a new guy go on a long hunt for food for the winter. When the new guy asks Anya a question, Daryl suddenly finds himself feeling something he never thought he would: jealousy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mike is an original character, so if there is a Mike in the TV series, there's no intentional relation.

Daryl, Mike and I readied ourselves for what was meant to be almost 2 weeks away from the community and I left a new woman named Denise in charge of the hospital area, which Rick had put me in charge of, unofficially. She had meant to be a surgeon, but she had panic attacks, so she left for another field, but it didn’t matter to me. Before I left, I brought her a few brained walkers so she could practice on them. They weren’t badly mangled or beaten, they looked recently dead and I told her to work on them. Sutures, surgery, whatever she needed to do. It was like medical school all over again, and Tara would help her with it. Tara had no issues with working on the corpses and she was learning too. Denise had no confidence in herself, and that was the main issue with her, much like Eugene had no confidence in himself; I hoped that some practice time would help her. 

Daryl, Mike and I left the community before frost clung to the grass, but our breath would mist in the air in the early morning. Daylight was getting shorter and shorter, so work was getting more intense for everyone, and I felt a little rushed as I left with Daryl and mike, and I kept thinking about what we might be missing, but I couldn’t think of anything. So we left very early, before sunrise, and drove south to the woody area I had seen on a map as Daryl drove and mike sat on the other side of me, feeling very flustered with 2 of the strongest people he had ever met beside him. 

And Anya was one of the prettiest girls he had seen in years, even before the turn. He looked at her as she flipped the map over in her hands, ever so delicately, looking up at him through her lashes when she felt he was looking at her for too long, how she sat in her seat like she had a purpose to save the world. It was intoxicating to Mike. And he had to work very hard for it not to show, how he would looked at her body, wrapped tightly in a layer of leather and cotton, leggings tight to her toned, long legs, hair tied back expertly so just a few strands hung in her face casting her eyes and lips in a gorgeous shadow. She was hot, was all he could think and he wondered if he had a chance with her.

“I can feel you staring you know,” I said as I looked down at the map and then looked over at the young man next to me. He looked down and blushed and I thought that it looked kind of cute. He seemed to think I was out of his league, that’s the impression I got from him. But he wasn’t bad looking; he had short light brown hair, soft gray eyes and a nice smile. He also knew how to hold and fire a weapon, that was important in the apocalypse.

“Sorry, I was just thinking, that if we get something good and we get back okay…if you’d want to have dinner or something with me,” he said then looked away from me and I smiled. He looked so embarrassed at the moment like he wanted to dissolve himself into the seat cushions and never come out. I smiled at him and looked at Daryl as the man laughed at the awkwardness. “Don’t laugh at the man, Daryl. It’s not easy asking a girl on a date.” I scolded him and Daryl looked at me and rolled his eyes and smiled at the idea of me with the semi-geek sitting next to me. 

“Alright,” I said to mike and he looked at me after a moment, slowly turning his head to me, as if he was going insane. “Alright, dinner sounds nice. I’ll bring something too, if that’s okay,” I said to him and he smiled so wide as he nodded, I thought his head would explode. I smiled at him and was aware that Mike was shaking, almost like he was now terrified that I had said yes.

Next to Anya, Daryl heard her say yes and his chest tightened angrily, his grip on the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white. He didn’t think Anya would say yes, she didn’t seem like the type to be into guys like Mike, he was kind of scrawny, nerdy almost, less than an inch taller than her, and he looked like a good wind would blow him over. He felt the anger and something else rising in his face and he opened a window to let himself cool off as Anya and Mike leaned back in the seat and Anya looked back at the map.


	16. Night One Hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Anya and Mike go hunting together for boar, and Anya shows them all up.

“We should be there soon. The clipping said this place had a lot of hogs and was becoming a problem. Apparently, they were reproducing faster than they were hunted. If that’s true, their population should have exploded without people to control the population, and only a few large predators around here to eat them,” I said as the final day of driving came to an end. The signs on the road led to the ranch where we were heading and on the way, I saw some rooting from the hogs on the side of the road, and just a few walkers along the way. There weren’t a lot of people out this way, it was really spread out, so there shouldn’t be many walkers either. The land was hilly, woody and full of wildlife. I could hear all kinds of birds and animals as we left the car and Mike would remain behind and guard the gear while Daryl and I hunted and got the lay of the land. Mike would hunt with Daryl tomorrow, and it would be mike and me the next day. I left mike with the stuff and watched him take a position just behind the trees so he could see the car, but wasn’t visible from the road. It was a smart place to be and I realized he was smart, just lacked physical prowess and experience.

Daryl and I walked in silence for several hours, seeing signs of hogs all over the place: rooting, scat, trails and the noises. I would snap around every few minutes from the noise of something moving in the underbrush near us, but the hogs would always run off before we got a good shot on them. We walked for a few more hours, the sun starting to cast the woods in a dark shadow and we knew this was almost the end of the day for us, but the hogs would start coming out now, they were nocturnal. 

We decided to watch and wait near some thick trees by a trail and sure enough, as the sun started to set and it got harder to see, we heard them, at least 4 hogs, walking the path. We were downwind and they hadn’t smelt us yet. We took aim, looking for the movement of the creatures and we got took shots. I used my compound bow and he used his crossbow. We both heard 2 separate squeals and the hogs scattered, but 2 remained behind, injured and eventually they wandered a few yards before falling and dying. I had shot the larger hog, looked like a massive boar, and he had shot a smaller sow, but it still had more than 50lbs of meat on it. Mine looked like it would bowl over Mike with a glance and its massive tusks were longer than my hand. We slashed their throats and let them bleed out, dressed them for the road and carried them to the car. It was like the woods with the deer all over again, except this time, Daryl took the larger boar from me and I carried the smaller one. I didn’t argue, I knew he still felt bad, even if I no longer cared. We had lots of meat now, and good meat, and neither of us had been hurt on the hunt with wild boar in a strange new place. I counted that as a very good day.

We ate some of the boar that night and I started smoking some of the meat, it would go bad fast if something wasn’t done. I made a quick, makeshift smoker with some plywood, a metal AC duct and some wet wood from a large tree. It would take hours for the meat to smoke, and I couldn’t be sure I was doing it right, but I knew that if I didn’t do it, the meat would go bad before we got back to the community. Daryl wasn’t talking or looking at me or Mike as we ate the boar and Mike talked about his life before the turn. I was right; he had been a techy person before all this. He had majored in IT support, and laughed when I made a joke about tech support for computers. I hated tech when it was around before the turn, it was annoying for me because I could never get the damn things to work. I got along just fine, but it would drive me up the wall sometimes. I told him a little about myself, what I did before the turn, where I went to school, a bit about my family, even the fact that I still felt my sisters were alive, after almost a year of not seeing them. Somehow, I felt them still alive, even though I knew it wasn’t likely, I could feel them. 

I learned Mike had lost his little brother, his mom and his dad shortly after the turn when his neighborhood was overrun. He had been at college and had left Virginia to go back home to find them, but he was too late, they had been killed and eaten very early on. I felt his pain. I told him about my fiancé, and our terrible sense of timing. He actually got out a laugh when I talked about that, us being engaged just a month before the turn. I had lost him almost instantly, he as trying to be brave for his mom, and it cost him his life. I still remember how he hadn’t thought about me; I was being cornered as he tried to protect his mom. But both he and his mother died. He wasn’t the best guy, and I had come to feel like I really deserved better than him. He had been kind of an ass to me and my family, and none of my family had liked him when they first met him. I always thought it was because he thought I would leave him for a woman.

I stayed up most of the night, stoking the fire and making sure the meat was being smoked all night. My main worry was that walkers or people would come to the smell, but the night passed without worry. I guess there weren’t a lot of people around to come to the smell. Though the land was woody and full of game, it was hard to get to and there weren’t a lot of buildings around to live in. Good for hunting and short term living, bad for long term habitation. The woods and thick underbrush made it hard to defend because enemies could be on you in a second and you would never know.


	17. Unable to Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Mike return from a hunt to find an injured Anya, and 3 dead men. To keep the hunt going, she hides the keys and feels like she needs to complete the hunt for the community. She finally starts feeling like she wants to stay.

Mike and Daryl left before sunrise, just as the sky turned gray and orange. It was another clear and beautiful day, but the night had been cold and I had to cuddle with Mike and Darryl to keep myself from freezing. Yep, awkward. Daryl hated it when someone touched him, I could understand that, and I had touched him by accident while moving around during the night. Daryl hadn’t slept either, sitting up with me, looking at me once in a while and I knew he wanted to say something to me, but when I would look at him, he’d just glare away angrily. I left him alone, but when the wind picked up and blew leaves off the trees, I had moved closer to Daryl and Mike, trying to keep warm. Daryl had moved away from me quickly, glaring at me when I had gotten too close to him, my arm rubbing against his for a moment. I had pulled away from him and moved closer to Mike to stay warm. He slept the entire night, despite me asking Daryl to sleep and for mike to take watch. Daryl just tended to ignore me for whatever reason. He had done it when I asked for his help hunting, and he was doing it now. He had done it in the community every time I had tried to talk to him about something. I guess I had pissed him off or something, but I had no idea what I had done. Whatever, his life, he can hate me if he wants; I’ve been hated before, and I didn’t die from it.

Mike and Daryl left into the woods before I could see the sun over the treetops and I sat near the smoker and the fire, slightly out of sight. I could hear all the noises the woods made: birds chirping and flying off, occasional snapping twig from a deer or rabbit, and the rare growl of a walker near me, but it was only 2 during the entire day. I stoked the fires and made sure the smoker had plenty of wood and checked the meat once in a while to see if it was done, and around mid-afternoon, I could remove the smaller pieces. I stored them in a container, stoked the fire and killed a walker. 

Deep in the woods, Mike could feel the anger that Daryl was giving off: if looks could kill, Mike would be dead. “Listen man, if I did something to make you mad, I’m sorry. Is this about Anya? Is she your girl?” Mike asked in a hushed whisper as they waited near another trail that led into a boar nest. Daryl said noting but looked at mike, then shook his head. “nah, she’s not my girl,” Daryl said and as he said ‘my girl’ he felt a twinge in his stomach. It kind of sounded nice. “do you like her? If you were gonna ask her out or something, you can. I didn’t think she’d say yes,” mike stuttered out, a little scared of the muscular deadshot in front of him. Daryl glared at the smaller, younger man, and growled at him to shut up. Daryl got another hog and Mike carried it back to the camp since Daryl killed it.  
When they got back to camp, they saw several dead men lying on the ground, then they heard a faint whimper and Mike dropped his hog and ran to Anya. She looked like she had been beaten to hell, her face was swelling up, dead men around her, and a small knife still sticking out of her leg. Daryl raced to her and picked her up carefully, putting her in the car and getting ready to start it. Anya grabbed his hand and stopped him.

“No, we need to keep hunting, I’ll be OK. Nothing’s broken, I just can’t hunt tomorrow,” I said, wincing as I sat back, the keys in my hand. We couldn’t go back now, not when we finally found a honey hole of meat. We needed to stay and hunt some more. I hadn’t fired a shot, so the walkers wouldn’t come to the fight, there was nothing to draw them. Daryl and Mike tried to grab the keys from me, then I shoved them down my shirt and they looked at me very angrily but gave up. 

“We invested too much to come here to give up early. Just, hand me my bag, I’ll be fine in a few days,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It felt a little off, but wasn’t broken. I felt like everything on my face and neck was bruised, but nothing felt too bad. It was all just swollen and bruised; I would be fine in a few days.  
I used some herbs brought with me to speed up healing and reduce the swelling. It had not been much of a fight, but I was angrier with myself for letting my guard down enough for one of the men to stab me in my leg. That would take much longer to heal, and my group needed me. I stopped dabbing the wounds and thought about that: my group. I had become closer with many of them over the last few weeks: Tara, Maggie, Glenn, Michonne and Carl, I liked them all, and I liked Rick too. He was a good leader and a smart strategist, thinking ahead and about now, all at the same time. Tara was my first friend in a long time, and Sasha was a badass like me. Carol was strategic and good at her façade; I was a little envious of it all. Maggie knew just what to say and Rosita was so nice. I had gotten used to them, to their company, so now I was faced with the idea that I didn’t want to lose them too. They were strong, but shit still happened. That was why I didn’t want to leave so soon. They were counting on me to bring back lots of meat, to be a provider for them. And I realized how much I liked it.


	18. Finishing the Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl, Anya and Mike finish the hunt, but come back to the community to learn a dangerous secret.

Daryl and Mike watched Anya carefully during the night as she got some sleep, her body aching and sore, but she had taken some chamomile tea for sleep and she was out cold. Mike and Daryl watched her and the area around them, the fire just a few coals for heat and light, the smoker putting off more heat. Anya was sleeping in the car, the keys still down her shirt and pressed a little into her skin. Daryl couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was one of the strongest people he had ever met: a hunter, a fisher, resourceful, and a good person. That was hard to find now. He didn’t want to admit that he was jealous when Anya had agreed to go to dinner with Mike, but he was. He still was jealous. But he was afraid, he didn’t want to ruin her, he wasn’t good for her, she needed and deserved more than he had to offer. Mike looked over at Daryl and looked back at Anya, sleeping soundly in the car. 

“She trusts you, you know. Why don’t you trust her?” Mike looked over at Daryl, thinking he might get an answer, but Daryl just looked off into space, and turned at every noise the trees and animals made. Even shot a few squirrels while they were waiting, but he didn’t want to say anything. She was forgiving Daryl, but he wasn’t forgiving himself: because he had blown her off, she got hurt. She could’ve been killed or worse. And it was his fault.  
The next day rose bright, cold and clear, just like the last few days, and perfect for hunting. Like the day before, mike and Daryl left before sunrise, despite Daryl being afraid to leave me in an injured state. I was fine, I had 2 guns on me, a knife, my bow, and my own skills. They were in more danger than I was.   
The meat was done smoking and I put it in the container too, letting it all fill my nose with that delicious smell ad took a tiny piece for my breakfast. I resumed my duty of smoking the new boar, preserving all that I could, even the odd things like the heart, liver, spleen and kidneys. The tusks would be cool trophies for the main house where meetings took place and might get more people interested in hunting. The pelts were wrapped up in old rock salt, rubbed with oil to prevent them from drying out and to be used for something, I just wasn’t sure what. 

At least they would look cool, I had to admit that as I looked them over, gloves on my hands as I rubbed salt in. The rock salt had been mixed with something for the roads, so it couldn’t be eaten, but it made a great preserver. I enjoyed this work, the smell of salt, sweat and cooking meat all around me as I rubbed the thick, coarse fur with the ground up salt. The day passed without issue, but I needed to change my bandages often as they opened up and I bled when I moved. At least I had a decent amount of herbs and mixtures to prevent infection and heal the wound; I bet it wouldn’t be more than a puffy pink line when we got back to the community, not even scabbed.

As the sun set, they emerged from the woods, barely visible in the fast fading light and they had gotten one more hog, but it looked like the other hogs had already hurt it, maybe a fight. It had a bad leg and couldn’t run anymore. Mike carried it again, telling me that Daryl had once again gotten the kill. Mike looked embarrassed as he looked at me and set the large pig down on the cleared spot of ground where we dressed them for the drive home. It was too late to head back now; the sun wasn’t bright enough. We’d only get a few miles before it became stupidly dangerous to drive. I helped Daryl prep this one too as Mike checked out the finished meat and made some supper for him and Daryl. I wasn’t hungry, I kept telling him, but he kept asking me to eat something, but I wasn’t hungry. 

Daryl eventually gave me a look, then gave Mike a look and the conversation stopped. I removed the inedible organs while Mike stirred some meat in the soup we had brought with us, and Daryl cut up the boar to make it fit in the car better. Large tarps took up the backseat and trunk, and the trunk was already full of the container with smoked meat in it. The meat wasn’t done, not by a long shot, it needed more time, but the smoking would help prevent it from going bad while we brought it back. I took down the smoker and left behind the bad organs and the plywood, but kept the large vent for future use.

We sat in the car, waiting for the sun to come up as Mike and Daryl ate, watching the stars. That was something I liked about this world; you could see every possible star in the sky every night with no ambient light to cancel it out. I could see the faint misty look of the milky way, and the sky had just so many stars, big, small, yellow, red, white, all so pretty and sparkling. I sighed, happy for a moment and then sat up and slowly rubbed my leg, massaging it from the pain. It had missed the arteries and bone when that man stabbed me, but I was thinking about their faces when they saw me. 

They were hungry, and at first I didn’t want to hurt them. I offered them some food if they would leave me alone. One of the men took the food I offered him and ate it, never taking his eyes off me; he undressed me with his eyes, but he didn’t do anything. The other men started to go through my stuff, and when I tried to stop them, I was stabbed through the leg, and another man grabbed my breast. It was obvious there was no helping those men, I had given them a chance, so I killed them. Except the man that had only taken the food and not attacked me. It had been the right thing to do, not killing him; he wasn’t bad, he was just with bad men, and he knew they were bad. I guess that’s why he didn’t attack me when his companions died. 

When the sun finally rose, we all piled into the front seat, Mike now between me and Daryl. He said it was because the middle was cramped and I needed room for my leg. I thought it was because he wanted Daryl to know that he was with me, and Daryl couldn’t have me. He was right about more room though. We drove for hours, talking about nothing in particular, or talking about the members of the community that Mike knew.

I was trying to get a feel for everyone else in the community that I hadn’t been able to talk to or meet yet. There was an older couple, some women that hadn’t come to the defense lessons, and a few men that hated me because I could beat their asses and they knew it. That made me laugh, and I saw Daryl crack a smile. Daryl didn’t say anything as we stopped for the night, still several hours drive form the community and we sat under the stars, and I made some food with Mike on watch and Daryl looking at the car. It had started making noise the last few miles, and we didn’t have something to bring all the meat back in if the car broke down. Daryl wasn’t sure what the issue was, but the car had still been running before we turned it off, so it should turn over in the morning. 

I was worried that we might be stranded this far from the community and we could get ambushed by people or swarmed with walkers. My biggest fear was the Wolves, if they would come while 2 of their best shots were gone. There wasn’t anything I could do about it this far away, except take my stuff and leave once the place was gone. The wolves would need to take down the walls, or at least a portion of it, to get everyone in needed for a proper assault. 1 or 2 climbing over the walls at a time wouldn’t work for them, Sasha and Rick could just pick them off as their heads cleared it. Regardless of the dangers, Rick was there, so were Michonne, Carol, Abraham, Glenn and Maggie, even Carl was a badass for his age. They would at least be okay for a week.

When the community came into view, I was relived, until I found out what Rick and Morgan had found. A massive herd of walkers were trapped in a quarry, hundreds of them, and the trucks that were keeping them in was starting to move. A truck on the roadway that led out was on the edge of the cliff and once it fell, the walkers had a way to get out of the quarry and them following the roads would lead them to Alexandria. 

Rick and most of the community, almost all the men except Aaron and a few others, would handle the walkers. Some of the inexperienced people, mostly the annoying bitch wives, as I called them, would remain behind. That was leaving the place very exposed. Carol would go with them to watch from above, so I volunteered to remain behind and guard the place in case we were being watched. I was sure we were being watched, at least recently, and once the wolves saw that most of our man power was gone, they would attack, kill who remained behind and take what we had for themselves. It could be a bloodbath.


	19. Wolves Attack, Walker Herd, and a Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of this first part. With most of the community working on the massive walker herd in the quarry, Anya remains behind in case of attack. The Wolves attack, and Anya is left to deal with the invasion. When the rest return, Anya and Rick share a moment, and Anya makes a life-changing decision.

Rick knew I made a good point and I walked the streets after the large group had left and watched the walls, listening for odd noises. The most annoying woman in the world was on her front lawn, smoking a cigarette and it annoyed me that she wasn’t helping prep the food we had worked so hard to bring back. Despite my limp, I was still working hard, and all she did was bitch and complain. 

Suddenly, I heard a scream and I looked over and saw a masked man, a W carved in his forehead and blood all over his machete. I shot him in the head with my gun and I heard more screaming, laughing and attacking all over the place. Maggie was here too, and I knew she was a good shot, but she couldn’t take them all on, and she needed to be careful: she was pregnant. I sent her to the house and to lock herself in with Carl, Judith and anyone else that was on the streets. I had 2 guns in my hands as I ran down the streets, shooting anyone attacking, those with the W, anyone that didn’t look like they belonged here. The Wolves were dressed like roving gangs from Mad Max with bandannas, hoods and heavy dark clothing, almost cliché looking if I was honest. I kept shooting and shooting in the streets and soon I heard the screaming from inside houses as the wolves went into homes to kill and steal. I had cleared the street and was about to go house to house when I heard something loud and big hit the wall where the lookout post was. A loud horn sounded, like a car alarm, but from a semi, and Spencer almost fell from his perch in that lookout, then he slid from view and the horn stopped.

I had no idea how long the horn had been going, but I knew it would draw every walker for miles to here, and with the hole in the wall, we were all in deep shit. Rick, Daryl and his group were still far away, leading another herd of walkers from our community, hopefully, so I had to deal with this on my own. There weren’t many people left that were strong or good enough to fight. So I yelled for them to lock themselves in their homes and wait until I came for them. Some that hadn’t been hit yet or seen what was coming came out of their homes to look, and most of them got killed as they exposed themselves. I shot and shot and shot and I was running out of bullets, so I ran for the armory. If the wolves got into the armory, we would all be wiped out.

Olivia was hiding with the guns, and I handed her a gun, telling her that if someone came through the door, to shoot them. She looked terrified at first, but I gripped her arm and she nodded to me, pulling courage from somewhere deep inside and stood sentry. I took all I needed from the armory, locked the gates closed and went from one house to another, killing anyone that didn’t belong. The Wolves put up a fight, and by the time it was over, I was tired and injured, but fortunately, others had fought for their lives. 

Jessie had stabbed a woman to death in her kitchen with scissors, and Emily and Robert, a couple down the street, had beaten 2 wolves to death when their son was threatened. I want from one house to another, slowly clearing it, and then locking it up again if no one lived in it. If someone was alive in it, I told them to keep it all locked up and wait for me to give the all clear. One by one, I went through the houses, making my way through the living rooms, kitchens, all the closets and hiding places I could see, putting a bullet into the heads of anyone that had attacked us. I left their bodies there, I had more important things to do, and again I ran out of bullets in my Beretta. I had used my knife too, and had either killed or injured all the wolves that had made it in. I knew a few left the community, Morgan had let them go and I was not happy about that, but the community was still unsafe as I glared at him and made my way through the houses and streets.

It was hours later, and I had finally gone through the last house when I knocked on all doors with living members and told them to come out. The gate had been locked, Maggie stood on sentry, Morgan was pulling back the semi from the wall, and Deanna was counting the lost. There were so many dead, both the wolves and us. I knew it would be very hard and unpleasant for a lot of people. But this was going to happen eventually, it always does. The wall was broken, and walkers were coming towards sound of the fight, more than I had seen in a long time. Spencer and Ayden were heading up Wolves’ body removal, putting them in a large heap near the entrance for removal outside the walls to be burned

I sat on the armory’s steps, Olivia taking my weapons back and I heard rick and his group returning. They had come as fast as they could when they heard the horn go off, but that was hours ago. Rick had lost the RV, because a group had attacked him. When I heard it was 5 people with the W in their foreheads, I punched Morgan in anger. He wasn’t fast enough to stop me but Rick tried to hold me back as I went in for another round. 

“See what happens when you don’t do what needs to be done? They killed so many of our people, your people, and you let them go. And what do they do? Try to kill Rick, and wreck the RV. You are the reason they did that. You’re the reason Rick was almost killed, why I had to kill them all on my own, why so many of our people are dead. You couldn’t handle it, and they died because of it. Michelle, Kate, Richard, Tony, Tom, Reggie and Mary, Clark, Anne, the Russo twins and their parents! It’s on you, Morgan, it’s on you!” I screamed at him and I saw him crack and try to swing at me, but I grabbed his stick and swung it back at him, nailing him in the face. “It’s on you!” I screamed at him and I stormed off, tears running freely down my face.

It had been a long time since I had felt so strongly about people; every death in the community felt like it was my fault, like I hadn’t move fast enough, hadn’t done enough, even thought I knew it wasn’t true. These peopled hadn’t been ready, and I knew it, but I still felt the weight of every cry and scream and death on me as I walked down the street, watching as our dead were pulled from their homes and covered with sheets, then pulled to the cemetery for burial. The last of the Wolves were rounded up, dead bodies piled outside the walls for burning, and our final lost member was put in the cemetery as holes were started.  
Someone used hoses to washed blood down the sewer, people came from their houses and assessed the damage, and Olivia took my guns from me again, but I kept my knives and my Beretta. I could see the depression on everyone’s face, the realization of what really faced us and what we really had to deal with when the enemy had a brain. I heard screams and cries, some people reunited with someone that went on the walker detail, others screaming and crying when their loved one didn’t return, and saw that not many had come back, certainly not many that hadn’t part of Rick’s group. Glenn was still missing, and so was Nicolas, but I didn’t care about him. I was worried the most for Maggie, and how her husband, and father of her unborn child, was missing.

Rick stood by me as we looked at the broken and wounded community; I rubbed the back of my neck as we counted the dead in the sheets, watched the burning bodies outside the wall rise over the top of the wall, and listened as people mourned the loss of their friends and family. Everyone was broken, everyone was tired, scared and it looked like those remaining had lost hope. Rick patted my back, both a job well done and consoling me for what had just happened. I looked at him as he rubbed his face, and I could see the wear on him, the stress it all caused him. 

“You aren’t doing this alone, Rick,” I suddenly said and he looked at me, then looked away. “it may feel like that, like it’s you against the world, but you aren’t alone. The deaths here, they aren’t on you, they’re on the Wolves. And Morgan. And me,” I finally said and he looked at me and shook his head.  
“No, they aren’t. it’s on the Wolves, Anya,” he said but couldn’t seem to say anything else.

“Rick, no matter what happens next, no matter what we go through, I’ll be here for you, and everyone else,” I finally said and a genuine smile, one that reached his eyes, slid over his face, the first real smile I had ever seen. 

“Does that mean you’re staying?” he asked me, looking down at me, his hand still on my back and I felt it slowly sliding down, and I stifled a shiver.  
“Yes, I’m staying. As long as this place exists, and even after, I’m staying with you,” I said and he smiled wider, looked down at me and we shared a gaze, then I looked away as I felt something creepy up in my stomach.

“Thank you, Anya,” he said and I felt him take a step closer to me and I looked up at him. He was facing me, his eyes almost level with mine and his hand on my back wouldn’t let me lean away from him. He leaned in closer, and closer; I could smell him, like gunpowder, gun cleaner, musky, and a little aftershave. Our eyes met for a moment then his mouth grazed mine, then pushed against my lips hard. When I gasped, his tongue slid into my mouth and tangled with mine as I placed my hand in his hair, enjoying the passion and roughness of it. Every movement was male, intense and rough, like him, but he didn’t push it further. His kiss was warm, open-mouthed and experienced; he was a damn good kisser, I had to admit as I pushed myself a little closer to him, and he put his hands on my hips. 

He pulled his mouth away from mine and I felt myself blushing, a little too eager to continue this, then I felt a bit like a slut. He was seeing Jessie, and I had known that, and I enjoyed the kiss and kissed back anyway. I looked away from him, feeling a little but ashamed, then angry, then horrified when I heard a loud crumbling sound.

The lookout church that had been wrecked when the Wolves crashed the semi cracked, sending the bell tower falling into the wall, bringing the massive and thick steel walls down with it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a larger story, and was too big to submit as a single story, so I broke it up into parts, and again into chapters. Hope you enjoyed the work, and tell me what you think, I appreciate some feedback.


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